How and why people's environmental values change is a topical research issue, with major implications for sustainability policy. However, approaches based on individualistic models have had limited success in explaining the emergence of values, or developing interventions to change them. Work drawing on social practice theory takes an alternative approach, seeing values and practice as co-constructive. This paper examines how personal environmental values evolve through performance of practice, experience within specific contexts and social interaction. Drawing on a narrative-based study of (...) UK climate change campaigners, it aims to contribute to a much-needed dialogue between sociological and psychological approaches to environmental values. (shrink)

Advances in the study of Paul’s anthropology during the past century have been limited, particularly because of dominant theological approaches that leave many unresolved issues regarding the apostle’s understanding of humans. This article introduces a new approach, which grounds Paul’s anthropological discourse in eschatology, and underscores the importance of transformation. Through the application of this new approach, the esō anthrōpos, instantiated in believers through the Holy Spirit, is shown to be the locus of renewal, and to encompass the entire human. (...) A clear understanding of this concept provides support for the postulation of an intermediate state in Paul’s symbolic universe, a claim that is contested by many scholars. (shrink)

Nudges are small changes in the presentation of options that make a predictable impact on people's decisions. Proponents of nudges often claim that they are justified as paternalistic interventions that respect autonomy: they lead people to make better choices, while still letting them choose for themselves. However, existing work on nudges ignores the possibility of “hard choices”: cases where a person prefers one option in some respects, and another in other respects, but has no all‐things‐considered preference between the two. In (...) this paper, I argue that many significant medical decisions are hard choices that provide patients with an opportunity to exercise a distinctive sort of “formative autonomy” by settling their preferences and committing themselves to weigh their values in a particular way. Since nudges risk infringing formative autonomy by depriving patients of this opportunity, their use in medical contexts should be sensitive to this risk. (shrink)

Many of us take it for granted that states have a right to control the entry and settlement of non‐citizens in their territories, and hardly pause to consider or evaluate the moral justifications for immigration controls. For a long time, very few political philosophers showed a great deal of interest in the subject. However, it is now attracting much more attention in the discipline. This article aims to show that we most certainly should not take it for granted that states (...) enjoy a moral right to exclude would‐be immigrants. It is neither obvious nor uncontroversial. And if we cannot find adequate justifications for the existence of such a right, then we need to re‐evaluate the very backbone of current approaches to immigration policy. The paper begins with an overview of the existing academic debate about the extent of the right to freedom of movement. Next it introduces three arguments in support of the state’s right to exclude would‐be immigrants which draw on claims about the collective right to self‐determination. Finally it outlines three important challenges faced by these arguments in support of the state’s right to exclude. (shrink)

It can be hard to see where money fits in the world. Money seems both real and imaginary, since it has obvious causal powers, but is also, just as obviously, something humans have just made up. Recent philosophical accounts of money have declared it to be real, but for very different reasons. John Searle and Francesco Guala disagree over whether money is just whatever acts like money, or just whatever people believe to be money. In developing their accounts of institutions (...) as a part of social reality, each uses money as a paradigm institution, but they disagree on how institutions exist. Searle argues that the institution of money belongs to an ontological level separate from the physical world, held up by the collective intentions of a group, while Guala claims that money is a part of the ordinary physical world and is just whatever performs a “money-like function” in a group, regardless of what that group believes about it. Here, we argue that any purely functional account like Guala’s will be unable to capture the distinctive phenomenon of money, since monetary transactions are defined by the attitudes transactors hold toward them. Money will be obscured or misidentified if defined functionally. As we go on to show by examining recent work by Smit et al., belief in money does not require taking on all of Searle’s ontological commitments, but money and mental contents will stand or fall together. (shrink)

The nature of farming is – still – an essentially biological, and thus volatile, system, which poses substantial challenges to its integration into financialized capitalism. Financial investors often seek stability and predictability of returns that are hardly compatible with agriculture – but which are increasingly seen as achievable through data and digital farming technologies. This paper investigates how farmland investment brokers engage with, perceive, and produce farming data for their investors within a co-constructive process. Tackling land’s ‘stubborn materiality’ for investment, (...) I argue, has material and immaterial components: it includes the re-imagination of farming as a financial asset that delivers reliable income streams for investors; and the re-engineering of farmland’s concrete materialities with digital farming technologies. Farmland investment brokers develop investor-suitable farmland imaginaries, underpinned by storytelling as well as the calculative ‘evidence’ of (digital) data. At the same time, digital technologies have become a key tool for transforming farms into ‘investment grade assets’ endowed with the rich data on farm performance and financial returns requested by investors. I conclude that the assetization and digitization of farmland need to be seen as closely intertwined and mutually reinforcing processes and identify key areas for future research on this intersection. (shrink)

Jansen and Wall suggest a new way of defending hard paternalism in clinical research. They argue that non-therapeutic research exposing people to more than minimal risk should be banned on egalitarian grounds: in preventing poor decision-makers from making bad decisions, we will promote equality of welfare. We argue that their proposal is flawed for four reasons.First, the idea of poor decision-makers is much more problematic than Jansen and Wall allow. Second, pace Jansen and Wall, it may be practicable for regulators (...) to uncover the values that a potential research participant holds when agreeing to enter a research project, so their claim that we must ban such research projects for all if we are to ban them for poor decision-makers looks to be unmotivated. Third, there seem to be cases where the liberty to enter the sort of research project Jansen and Wall discuss is morally weighty, and arguably should outweigh concerns of egalitarian distribution. Fourth, banning certain types of research, which seem on the face of it to offer an unfavourable risk-benefit ratio, would have unwelcome consequences for all clinical research, which Jansen and Wall do not recognize. (shrink)

Letheby’s naturalistic theory of psychedelic therapy argues that the therapeutic power of psychedelics lies in their ability to allow individuals “to discover the contingency, mutability and simulatory nature of their own sense of identity and habitual modes of attention.” The general shape of this project is persuasive; it is hard to see how the claim that successful therapy must involve changes to the self could be objected to, and Letheby sketches a consistent, if speculative, picture of psychedelic experience. But the (...) role of affect in psychedelic therapy is insufficiently explored by Letheby as a comparison to MDMA-assisted therapy indicates. This comparison further suggests that Letheby’s reliance on a particular conceptualization of ego dissolution experiences is in need of further explanation and justification. (shrink)

This essay examines two distinct modes of sonic disjunction in Rosanna Bruno and Anne Carson’s The Trojan Women: A Comic and Carson’s H of H Playbook. The Trojan Women shows how noticing sounds that are dislocated from expectations exposes hard truths about reality. H of H interrogates our “regular” mode of hearing other people and implies that there is a gap in how we can know others and know ourselves. Thus, though both are graphic texts, their power and effect are (...) nonetheless garnered also through the sounds they describe and conjure in the minds of their readers. (shrink)

Descartes first invokes the errors of the senses in the Meditations to generate doubt; he suggests that because the senses sometimes deceive, we have reason not to trust them. This use of sensory error to fuel a sceptical argument fits a traditional interpretation of the Meditations as a work concerned with finding a form of certainty that is proof against any sceptical doubt. If we focus instead on Descartes's aim of using the Meditations to lay foundations for his new science, (...) his appeals to sensory error take on a different aspect. Descartes's new science is based on ideas innate in the intellect, ideas that are validated by the benevolence of our creator. Appeals to sensory error are useful to him in undermining our naïve faith in the senses and guiding us to an appreciation of innate ideas. However, the errors of the senses pose problems in the context of Descartes's appeals to God's goodness to validate innate ideas and natural propensities to belief. A natural tendency to sensory error is hard to reconcile with the benevolence of our creator. This paper explores Descartes's responses to the problems of theodicy posed by various forms of sensory error. It argues that natural judgements involved in our visual perception of distance, size and shape pose a problem of error that resists his usual solutions. (shrink)

In the context of formal educational standards in Canada and the United States today, conversations about good teaching can hardly be broached without pointing to what scientific communities consider appropriate to the developing psychologies of the student population. Developmental psychology plays a significant role in the conceptualization and implementation of public education, in everything from curriculum benchmarks to teacher certification. Throughout the formal system, the most effective goals and practices are those that are perceived to align with the developmental needs (...) of specific age groups, also known as developmentally appropriate practice. DAP especially informs teaching and... (shrink)

Povertyand poverty eradication was the predominant paradigm within which Indias twentieth century science policy was constructed. Yet, when we think of science in India today, this earlier priority of poverty eradication is now hard to find. What accounts for this? This volume asks: Has the problem of poverty in India been solved? Or, has it become inconvenient alongside the rise of new narratives that frame India as a site of remarkable economic growth?

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Let’s Start AgainSarah Wood (bio)Nicholas Royle. After Derrida. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1995.Robert Smith. Derrida and Autobiography. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995.start... v. i. to shoot, dart, move suddenly forth, or out: to spring up or forward: to strain forward: to break away: to make a sudden or involuntary movement as of surprise or becoming aware: to spring open, out of place, or loose: to begin to move: of a car, (...) engine, etc. to begin to work, to fire, combust: to set forth on a journey, race, career.—v. t. to begin: to set going: to set on foot: to set up: to drive from lair or hiding place: to cause or undergo displacement or loosening of: to startle (obs.): to pour out or shoot.—n. a sudden movement: a sudden involuntary motion of the body: a startled feeling: a spurt: an outburst or fit: a beginning of movement, esp. of a journey, race, or career: a beginning: a setting in motion: a help in or opportunity of beginning: an advantage in being early or ahead: the extent of such advantage in time or distance: a beginning of building work on a new house-site....—Chambers DictionaryAh, did you once see Shelley plain, And did he stop and speak to you And did you speak to him again? How strange it seems and new!But you were living before that, And also you are living after; And the memory I started at— My starting moves your laughter.—Robert Browning, “Memorabilia”The Shelley whose appearance regularly shocks Browning is, of course, a ghost. The bare fact of talking with a ghost is bound to be curious and impressive—enough to make one start. But at the same time it’s not unusual to converse with ghosts, and this generalization can be taken beyond the sphere of literature, beyond the notion of writers struggling with the mighty dead for imaginative priority, as it is conceived in Harold Bloom’s readings of Browning, for instance. Derrida insists that relationship in general requires the spectral: “[w]hat happens between two, and between all the ‘two’s’ one likes, such as between life and death, can only maintain itself with some ghost, can only talk with or about some ghost [s’entretenir de quelque fantôme]” [Derrida, Specters of Marx xviii]. Perhaps, then, what happens in and between the two books reviewed here needs to be approached in terms of ghosts and the psychoanalysis of ghosts, so powerfully thematized by Nicholas Royle. [End Page 4] Both his After Derrida and Robert Smith’s Derrida and Autobiography seek to make contact with something in writing that gets things going and produces breaks, that displaces and startles. Although each volume could still be called a monograph on Derrida, it responds to something other than a corpus.The sense of shock, wonder, and discontinuity that makes the imagined interlocutor in “Memorabilia” laugh illuminates also something playing itself out across the reception of Derrida’s work. Part of that reception could be conceived in familiar terms—the development of a canon of what could be called Derrida commentaries, the establishment of a set of themes readily associated with Derrida studies (charlatanism, the deconstruction of a metaphysics of presence, and so on). Yet to speak with or about ghosts entails having to start reading, listening, and thinking again, in order to broach familiarity anew without innocent recourse to sheer intuition. These books also, despite their scholarly knowledge of the field, share a sense of responsibility to discuss an aspect of writing—hard to ignore in Derrida—that has begun without commentary, that gets commentary started and that subjects the movement of thought to something like fits. Whether these fits are of phobia, laughter, melancholy, delirium, or anger, their irruption marks interesting gaps in thought’s continuity. More than moods, these strange outbursts might be understood better in terms of the theory of metapsychological “phantoms.” The phantom, according to Nicolas Abraham, is “sustained by secreted words, invisible gnomes whose aim is to wreak havoc, from within the unconscious, in the coherence of logical progression” [“Notes on the Phantom” 175]. The phantom is also “alien to the subject... (shrink)

Modern health care rhetoric promotes choice and individual patient rights as dominant values. Yet we also accept that in any regime constrained by finite resources, difficult choices between patients are inevitable. How can we balance rights to liberty, on the one hand, with equity in the allocation of scarce resources on the other? For example, the duty of health authorities to allocate resources is a duty owed to the community as a whole, rather than to specific individuals. Macro-duties of this (...) nature are founded on the notion of equity and fairness amongst individuals rather than personal liberty. They presume that if hard choices have to be made, they will be resolved according to fair and consistent principles which treat equal cases equally, and unequal cases unequally.In this paper, we argue for greater clarity and candour in the health care rights debate. With this in mind, we discuss (1) private and public rights, (2) negative and positive rights, (3) procedural and substantive rights, (4) sustainable health care rights and (5) the New Zealand booking system for prioritising access to elective services. This system aims to consider: individual need and ability to benefit alongside the resources made available to elective health services in an attempt to give the principles of equity practical effect. We describe a continuum on which the merits of those, sometimes competing, values—liberty and equity—can be evaluated and assessed. (shrink)

When Sasaki Sokei-an founded his First Zen Institute of North America in 1930 he suggested that bringing Zen Buddhism to America was like "holding a lotus against a rock and waiting for it to set down roots." Today, Buddhism is part of the cultural and religious mainstream. Flowers on the Rock examines the dramatic growth of Buddhism in Canada and questions some of the underlying assumptions about how this tradition has changed in the West. Using historical, ethnographic, and biographical approaches, (...) contributors illuminate local expressions of Buddhism found throughout Canada and relate the growth of Buddhism in Canada to global networks. A global perspective allows the volume to overcome the stereotype that Asia and the West are in opposition to each other and recognizes the continuities between Buddhist movements in Asia and the West that are shaped by the same influences of modernity and globalization. Flowers on the Rock studies the fascinating and ingenious changes, inflections, and adaptations that Buddhists make when they set down roots in a local culture. It is essential reading for anyone interested in Buddhism, religious life in Canada, and the broader issues of multiculturalism and immigration. Contributors include Michihiro Ama, D. Mitra Barua, Paul Crowe, Melissa Anne-Marie Curley, Mavis Fenn, Kory Goldberg, Sarah F. Haynes, Jackie Larm, Paul McIvor, James Placzek, and Angela Sumegi. (shrink)

ObjectivesWorking memory is essential for daily life skills like reading comprehension, reasoning, and problem-solving. Healthy aging of the brain goes along with working memory decline that can affect older people’s independence in everyday life. Interventions in the form of cognitive training are a promising tool for delaying age-related working memory decline, yet the underlying structural plasticity of white matter is hardly studied.MethodsWe conducted a longitudinal diffusion tensor imaging study to investigate the effects of an intensive four-week adaptive working memory training (...) on white matter integrity quantified by global and tract-wise mean diffusivity. We compared diffusivity measures of fiber tracts that are associated with working memory of 32 young and 20 older participants that were randomly assigned to a working memory training group or an active control group.ResultsThe behavioral analysis showed an increase in working memory performance after the four-week adaptive working memory training. The neuroanatomical analysis revealed a decrease in mean diffusivity in the working memory training group after the training intervention in the right inferior longitudinal fasciculus for the older adults. There was also a decrease in mean diffusivity in the working memory training group in the right superior longitudinal fasciculus for the older and young participants after the intervention.ConclusionThis study shows that older people can benefit from working memory training by improving their working memory performance that is also reflected in terms of improved white matter integrity in the superior longitudinal fasciculus and the inferior longitudinal fasciculus, where the first is an essential component of the frontoparietal network known to be essential in working memory. (shrink)

In an Israeli qualitative study with adolescent cancer survivors and parents who had considered fertility preservation, practically all participants could not recall any discussions with healthcare providers about plans for cryopreserved biological materials in the case of death. This finding is surprising given recent court struggles in Israel over the posthumous use of cryopreserved sperm. In interviews with these adolescent survivors and their parents, intended future use of cryopreserved biological materials is directed for affected individuals’ reproductive purposes later in life, (...) with hardly any consideration of others' use of these materials for posthumous reproduction. To avoid future ethical and legal quagmires, healthcare professionals should have frank discussions with adolescents and their parents about what to do with such materials in the case of death. This paper discusses the socio-cultural and legal Israeli context and considers the ethical implications of using minors’ biological materials for posthumous assisted reproduction in Israel. (shrink)

This article addresses the problem of writing the posthuman in educational research. Confronted by our own failures as educational researchers within posthuman and new materialist approaches, it seeks a more radical opening to Lather and St Pierre’s question: ‘If we give up “human” as separate from non-human, how do we exist? … Are we willing to take on this question that is so hard to think but that might enable different lives?’ We do this to enable different lives for the (...) planet in all of its manifestations, including its children of the Anthropocene. We begin with the insistent presence of mud in our deep hanging out in an early learning site and ask: what is mud, what does it do, where can mud lead us in its oozing at Grey Gums Preschool. From these explorations we include a scripted dialogue that was performed at a conference against a background of rolling images of the proliferation of mud’s play with children. We consider this scripted dialogue, and its performance, as data read in relati... (shrink)

This article explores the use of the Multilevel Governance concept to understand why EU Member-States, such as Belgium, sometimes fail to transpose EU directives correctly or in time. Firstly, it discusses the nature and the value of the MLG concept. It is argued that a theoretical incorporation of the MLG concept in the Neo-Institutional paradigm is necessary to gain explanatory power. Secondly, an overview is presented of the Belgian implementation record. In the last part, the combined use of the MLG (...) concept and the NI theory identifies several factors to explain failing implementation. It is argued that governance as well as multilevel institutions can constrain the desired smooth implementation. Examples of such hard and soft institutions include the multi-layeredfederal structure of Belgium, the complex co-ordination and implementation mechanisms, the role of advisory bodies and the Council of State, the relation between administrations and 'cabinets', and cultural features such as knowledge of the EU. (shrink)

Research has shown that individuals with high levels of psychopathic personality traits are likely to cause harm to others in the workplace. However, there is little academic literature on the potentially adaptive outcomes of corporate psychopathy, particularly because the “boldness” psychopathy domain has largely been under-acknowledged in this literature. This study aimed to elaborate on past findings by examining the associations between psychopathy, as operationalized using scales from the relatively new triarchic model of psychopathy, and both adaptive and maladaptive workplace (...) behaviors. Participants were 343 working community adults who completed a series of self-report questionnaires that measured psychopathy and various workplace behaviors, including counterproductive work behaviors, tactics of influence, unethical decision-making, leadership strategies, team play, and creativity. Structural equation modeling was used to estimate the associations between latent constructs of boldness, meanness, and disinhibition, and the eight different constructs related to workplace behaviors. It was found that boldness preferentially predicted the use of soft tactics of influence, adaptive leadership, and team play, and negatively predicted passive leadership. Meanness predicted unethical decision-making, poor team play, and hard tactics of influence. Disinhibition positively predicted CWB and passive leadership. Meanness also moderated the association between disinhibition and CWB, in that greater scores on both psychopathy domains indicated greater levels of CWB. These findings provide conceptual support for the triarchic model, including the “boldness” domain, which measures adaptive aspects of psychopathy in addition to maladaptive ones, as well as suggest that not all individuals high on psychopathy would be an overt menace to the workplace. The different psychopathy traits may also interact with each other to predict different types or levels of workplace behaviors. (shrink)

Language sample analysis is an important practice for providing a culturally sensitive and accurate assessment of a child's language abilities. A child's usage of literate language devices in narrative samples has been shown to be a critical target for evaluation. While automated scoring systems have begun to appear in the field, no such system exists for conducting progress-monitoring on literate language usage within narratives. The current study aimed to develop a hard-coded scoring system called the Literate Language Use in Narrative (...) Assessment, to automatically evaluate six aspects of literate language in non-coded narrative transcripts. LLUNA was designed to individually score six literate language elements. The interrater reliability of LLUNA with an expert scorer, as well as its' reliability compared to certified undergraduate scorers was calculated using a quadratic weighted kappa. Results indicated that LLUNA met strong levels of interrater reliability with an expert scorer on all six elements. LLUNA also surpassed the reliability levels of certified, but non-expert scorers on four of the six elements and came close to matching reliability levels on the remaining two. LLUNA shows promise as means for automating the scoring of literate language in LSA and narrative samples for the purpose of assessment and progress-monitoring. (shrink)

The teacher’s personality in general plays an important role in the educational process. It is often examined in relation to outcome factors on the teacher or student side, e.g. teaching effectiveness or student motivation. Physical education (PE) with its peculiarities and allocated educational mandate particularly demands the personality of the PE teacher. Research considering this group of teachers is sparse, diverse and hard to capture due to different personality understandings. Our review therefore aims at identifying and analyzing underlying personality understandings, (...) research questions and results of studies considering the personality of the PE teacher. We conducted a scoping review. After the screening and additional analyses process, 23 studies were included. Included references had to be empirical, published in German or English and explicitly examine the PE teacher’s personality as variable or mention it as outcome factor in school context. All studies are cross-sectional, 22 studies quantitative, one qualitative. Regarding personality understandings, 12 studies follow a trait psychological, six studies a vocational, one study an interpersonal personality understanding. Four studies’ personality understanding is not concretely determinable. Considering research questions, three studies aim at identifying the PE teacher’s personality in general and do e.g. not find considerable differences between the PE teacher’s and other teacher’s personality. Nine studies examine the relationship between the PE teacher’s personality and different correlates such as burnout, highlighting e.g. that female PE teachers’ burnout process is less homogeneous than males. Eleven studies examine the PE teacher’s personality from an external view and show e.g. that students of different age groups perceive the PE teacher’s personality differently. Our review offers possible practical implications. By e.g. knowing their personality structure – their inside –, PE teachers can play to their own strengths and make use of their individual personality configuration in order to teach authentically and successfully, i.e. transferring the inside to the outside. Due to partly questionable and fragmentary methodologies of the included studies, results have to be interpreted with caution. More studies considering the PE teacher’s personality following a broad personality understanding are needed to include potentially relevant factors for teaching and by this receive evident insights. (shrink)

Many of our most important goals require months or even years of effort to achieve, and some never get achieved at all. As social psychologists have lately emphasized, success in pursuing such goals requires the capacity for perseverance, or "grit." Philosophers have had little to say about grit, however, insofar as it differs from more familiar notions of willpower or continence. This leaves us ill-equipped to assess the social and moral implications of promoting grit. We propose that grit has an (...) important epistemic component, in that failures of perseverance are often caused by a significant loss of confidence that one will succeed if one continues to try. Correspondingly, successful exercises of grit often involve a kind of epistemic resilience in the face of failure, injury, rejection, and other setbacks that constitute genuine evidence that success is not forthcoming. Given this, we discuss whether and to what extent displays of grit can be epistemically as well as practically rational. We conclude that they can be (although many are not), and that the rationality of grit will depend partly on features of the context the agent normally finds herself in. In particular, grit-friendly norms of deliberation might be irrational to use in contexts of severe material scarcity or oppression. (shrink)

Book synopis: A collection of more than 30 specially commissioned essays, this volume surveys the work of the 17th-century philosopher-scientist commonly regarded as the founder of modern philosophy, while integrating unique essays detailing the context and impact of his work. Covers the full range of historical and philosophical perspectives on the work of Descartes Discusses his seminal contributions to our understanding of skepticism, mind-body dualism, self-knowledge, innate ideas, substance, causality, God, and the nature of animals Explores the philosophical significance of (...) his contributions to mathematics and science Concludes with a section on the impact of Descartes's work on subsequent philosophers. (shrink)

Ten years after the Human Genome Project’s completion the life sciences stand in a moment of uncertainty, transition, and contestation. The postgenomic era has seen rapid shifts in research methodology, funding, scientific labor, and disciplinary structures. Postgenomics is transforming our understanding of disease and health, our environment, and the categories of race, class, and gender. At the same time, the gene retains its centrality and power in biological and popular discourse. The contributors to Postgenomics analyze these ruptures and continuities and (...) place them in historical, social, and political context. Postgenomics, they argue, forces a rethinking of the genome itself, and opens new territory for conversations between the social sciences, humanities, and life sciences. Contributors. Russ Altman, Rachel A. Ankeny, Catherine Bliss, John Dupré, Michael Fortun, Evelyn Fox Keller, Sabina Leonelli, Adrian Mackenzie, Margot Moinester, Aaron Panofsky, Sarah S. Richardson, Sara Shostak, Hallam Stevens. (shrink)

In _Sciences from Below_, the esteemed feminist science studies scholar Sandra Harding synthesizes modernity studies with progressive tendencies in science and technology studies to suggest how scientific and technological pursuits might be more productively linked to social justice projects around the world. Harding illuminates the idea of multiple modernities as well as the major contributions of post-Kuhnian Western, feminist, and postcolonial science studies. She explains how these schools of thought can help those seeking to implement progressive social projects (...) refine their thinking to overcome limiting ideas about what modernity and modernization are, the objectivity of scientific knowledge, patriarchy, and Eurocentricity. She also reveals how ideas about gender and colonialism frame the conventional contrast between modernity and tradition. As she has done before, Harding points the way forward in _Sciences from Below_. Describing the work of the post-Kuhnian science studies scholars Bruno Latour, Ulrich Beck, and the team of Michael Gibbons, Helga Nowtony, and Peter Scott, Harding reveals how, from different perspectives, they provide useful resources for rethinking the modernity versus tradition binary and its effects on the production of scientific knowledge. Yet, for the most part, they do not take feminist or postcolonial critiques into account. As Harding demonstrates, feminist science studies and postcolonial science studies have vital contributions to make; they bring to light not only the male supremacist investments in the Western conception of modernity and the historical and epistemological bases of Western science but also the empirical knowledge traditions of the global South. _Sciences from Below_ is a clear and compelling argument that modernity studies and post-Kuhnian, feminist, and postcolonial sciences studies each have something important, and necessary, to offer to those formulating socially progressive scientific research and policy. (shrink)

When we define something as a crime, we generally thereby criminalize the attempt to commit that crime. However, it is a vexing puzzle to specify what must be the case in order for a criminal attempt to have occurred, given that the results element of the crime fails to come about. I argue that the philosophy of action can assist the criminal law in clarifying what kinds of events are properly categorized as criminal attempts. A natural thought is that this (...) project should take the form of specifying what it is in general to attempt or try to perform an action, and then to define criminal attempts as attempts to commit crimes. Focusing on Gideon Yaffe's resourceful work in Attempts (Oxford University Press, 2010) as an example of this strategy, I argue that it results in a view that is overly inclusive: one will count as trying to commit a crime even in the far remote preparatory stages that we in fact have good reason not to criminalize. I offer an alternative proposal to distinguish between mere preparations and genuine attempts that has its basis not in trying, but doing: a criminal attempt is underway once what the agent is doing is a crime. Working out the details of this schema turns out to have important implications for action theory. A recently burgeoning view known as Naive Action Theory holds that all action can be explained by appeal to some further thing that the agent is doing, and that that the same explanatory nexus is at work even when we appeal to what the agent is intending, trying, or preparing to do -- these notions do explanatory work because they too refer to actions that are in progress, albeit in their infancy. If this is right, than the notion of 'doing' will also be too inclusive for the purposes of the criminal law. I argue that we should draw the reverse conclusion: the distinctions between pure intending, trying, preparing, and doing serve an important purpose in the criminal law, and this fact lends support to the view that they are genuine metaphysical and explanatory distinctions. (shrink)

This book provides a compositional, truth-conditional, crosslinguistic semantics for evidentiality, the linguistic encoding of the source of information on which a statement is based. Central to the proposed theory is the distinction between what propositional content is at-issue and what content is not-at-issue. Evidentials contribute not-at-issue content, and can affect the level of commitment a sentence makes to the main proposition, contributed by sentential mood. In this volume, Sarah Murray builds on recent work in the formal semantics of evidentials (...) and related phenomena, and proposes a semantics that does not appeal to separate dimensions of illocutionary meaning. Instead, she argues that all sentences make three contributions: at-issue content, not-at-issue content, and an illocutionary relation. At-issue content is presented and made available for subsequent anaphora, but is not directly added to the common ground; not-at-issue content directly updates the common ground; and the illocutionary relation uses the at-issue content to impose structure on the common ground, which, depending on the clause type, can trigger further updates. 0The analysis is supported by extensive empirical data from Cheyenne, drawn from the author's own fieldwork, as well as from English and a variety of other languages. (shrink)

After offering an opening consideration of the hazards of neoliberalism, I address the general shape of the crisis of care that has evolved under its auspices. Two aspects of this crisis require greater attention: the moral precarity of caregivers and the relational harms of neoliberal capitalism. Thus, I first consider the moral precarity that caregivers experience by drawing on a concept that originates in scholarly work on the experiences of healthcare workers and combat veterans, namely, moral injury. Through this concept, (...) we can see how caregivers in late-stage capitalism face a seemingly unavoidable violation of their own significant moral beliefs. Second, I examine how the crisis of care results not only in individual harms of moral injury but also in harms to relationships themselves, as I continue to track the impact of moral injury on our intrapersonal and interpersonal lives. Ultimately, I argue that an important facet of the crisis of care is how it operates as a crisis of relationality in which our intrapersonal and interpersonal connections are placed under practical and moral strain. In taking a broader view, we can see how the fraying of particular intrapersonal and interpersonal connections can accumulate, resulting in the unraveling of wider webs of interdependency, just when we need them most. Throughout the paper, I zero in on the moral implications of the crisis of care driven by neoliberalism, featuring the damages that caregivers and their relationships sustain when situated in morally precarious ways. In doing so, I drive home the point that the crisis of care under neoliberalism is as much a moral and relational crisis as it is a political and economic one. (shrink)

Worries about scientific objectivity seem never-ending. Social critics and philosophers of science have argued that invocations of objectivity are often little more than attempts to boost the status of a claim, while calls for value neutrality may be used to suppress otherwise valid dissenting positions. Objectivity is used sometimes to advance democratic agendas, at other times to block them; sometimes for increasing the growth of knowledge, at others to resist it. Sandra Harding is not ready to throw out objectivity (...) quite yet. For all of its problems, she contends that objectivity is too powerful a concept simply to abandon. In Objectivity and Diversity, Harding calls for a science that is both more epistemically adequate and socially just, a science that would ask: How are the lives of the most economically and politically vulnerable groups affected by a particular piece of research? Do they have a say in whether and how the research is done? Should empirically reliable systems of indigenous knowledge count as "real science"? Ultimately, Harding argues for a shift from the ideal of a neutral, disinterested science to one that prizes fairness and responsibility. (shrink)

This volume is an interdisciplinary attempt to insert a broader, historically informed perspective into current political and academic debates on the issue of evidence and the reliability of scientific knowledge. Evidence in Action is the perfect resource for all those interested in the relationship between science, technology, and the role of knowledge in society.

Over a span of thirty years, twentieth-century French philosophers Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida held a conversation across texts. Sharing a Jewish heritage and a background in phenomenology, both came to situate their work at the margins of philosophy, articulating this placement through religion and literature. Chronicling the interactions between these thinkers, Sarah Hammerschlag argues that the stakes in their respective positions were more than philosophical. They were also political. Levinas's investments were born out in his writings on Judaism (...) and ultimately in an evolving conviction that the young state of Israel held the best possibility for achieving such an ideal. For Derrida, the Jewish question was literary. The stakes of Jewish survival could only be approached through reflections on modern literature's religious legacy, a line of thinking that provided him the means to reconceive democracy. Hammerschlag's reexamination of Derrida and Levinas's textual exchange not only produces a new account of this friendship but also has significant ramifications for debates within Continental philosophy, the study of religion, and political theology. (shrink)

The prospect of using genome technologies to modify the human germline has raised profound moral disagreement but also emphasizes the need for wide-ranging discussion and a well-informed policy response. The Hinxton Group brought together scientists, ethicists, policymakers, and journal editors for an international, interdisciplinary meeting on this subject. This consensus statement formulated by the group calls for support of genome editing research and the development of a scientific roadmap for safety and efficacy; recognizes the ethical challenges involved in clinical reproductive (...) applications of genome editing but, importantly, rejects the idea that human reproductive germline modification is necessarily morally unacceptable; and highlights the importance of meaningful engagement in discussions of genome editing and the development of regulation and oversight mechanisms to govern future uses of such technologies. (shrink)

This paper proposes a theory of text on-screen as “unvoiceover.” It addresses both the case for captioning as social good and the affordances (aesthetic, affective) of writing in or over the moving image. Advancing an argument informed by perspectives from d/deaf Studies, Critical Disability Studies and Digital Interface Studies, and applying modes of analysis from literary criticism alongside those proper to the study of moving image and sound, it examines the idiosyncrasies of text-in-motion as non-sonorous, fugitive counterpart to the traditional, (...) troublesome “voiceover.” To develop a poetics of the unsounding voice on-screen, the paper focalizes its argument through multimedia artist Liza Sylvestre’s Captioned series: a body of moving image work that is itself, paradoxically, uncaptioned. Framing Sylvestre’s lyrical “unvoiceover” as a reimagining of the lost roles of film explainers and literary intertitles, I argue that the artist’s takeover of the caption track intervenes critically in contemporary debates about the ethics of audio-visual translation, situated description and access as public ethos rather than private concern. Posing the artist’s personal-and-political writing as suggestive of a lower-case analogue to Deaf Gain, I show how Sylvestre’s “unvoiceover” educates its “receivers” in the purpose and functioning of captions. By reading Sylvestre’s writing on-screen more closely than its fugitive form seems to invite, I show how the unvoiceover encultures its own demands on its readers and elicits its own habits of reading. By scrutinizing how Sylvestre’s series makes the case for captioning, this paper makes the case for a new appraisal of the aesthetic, affective and political affordances of the unvoiceover as writing on the run. (shrink)

In this reflection, I respond to Anthony Reddie's reflections and assertions about the sacramentality of black flesh in a world shaped by white supremacy. I locate myself as Korean American and refer to my experience of ministering to university students during the rise of Black Lives Matter in the US. Instead of offering cognate claims for the sacramentality of Asian flesh, I ask what theological repentance should look like in light of the historical profaning of the black body. Using the (...) work of two black American artists, jazz musician Robert Glasper and painter Titus Kaphar, I offer beginning reflections on how our liturgies and practices need to change as part of theological repentance—including lament. (shrink)

Traditional philosophical discussions of knowledge have focused on the epistemic status of full beliefs. In this book, Moss argues that in addition to full beliefs, credences can constitute knowledge. For instance, your .4 credence that it is raining outside can constitute knowledge, in just the same way that your full beliefs can. In addition, you can know that it might be raining, and that if it is raining then it is probably cloudy, where this knowledge is not knowledge of propositions, (...) but of probabilistic contents. -/- The notion of probabilistic content introduced in this book plays a central role not only in epistemology, but in the philosophy of mind and language as well. Just as tradition holds that you believe and assert propositions, you can believe and assert probabilistic contents. Accepting that we can believe, assert, and know probabilistic contents has significant consequences for many philosophical debates, including debates about the relationship between full belief and credence, the semantics of epistemic modals and conditionals, the contents of perceptual experience, peer disagreement, pragmatic encroachment, perceptual dogmatism, and transformative experience. In addition, accepting probabilistic knowledge can help us discredit negative evaluations of female speech, explain why merely statistical evidence is insufficient for legal proof, and identify epistemic norms violated by acts of racial profiling. Hence the central theses of this book not only help us better understand the nature of our own mental states, but also help us better understand the nature of our responsibilities to each other. (shrink)

Abstract In this paper I criticise a recent account of fictional discourse proposed by Nathan Salmon. Salmon invokes abstract artifacts as the referents of fictional names in both object- and meta-fictional discourse alike. He then invokes a theory of pretence to forge the requisite connection between object-fictional sentences and meta-fictional sentences, in virtue of which the latter can be assigned appropriate truth-values. I argue that Salmon's account of pretence renders his appeal to abstract artifacts as the referents of fictional names (...) in object-fictional discourse explanatorily redundant. I further argue that his account is therefore no improvement over those he criticises, thus leaving his own account unmotivated. (shrink)

_The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Psychology, Second Edition_ is an invaluable guide and major reference source to the major topics, problems, concepts and debates in philosophy of psychology and is the first companion of its kind. A team of renowned international contributors provide forty-nine chapters organised into six clear parts: Historical background to Philosophy of Psychology Psychological Explanation Cognition and Representation The biological basis of psychology Perceptual Experience Personhood. _The Companion_ covers key topics such as the origins of experimental (...) psychology; folk psychology; behaviorism and functionalism; philosophy, psychology and neuroscience; the language of thought, modularity, nativism and representational theories of mind; consciousness and the senses; dreams emotion and temporality; personal identity and the philosophy of psychopathology. For the_ second edition_ many of the current chapters have been updated, and seven new chapters added on important new topics such predictive processing, comparative cognition, learning, and group cognition, as well as a new introductory chapter by the editors on the demarcation between philosophy and psychology. Essential reading for all students of philosophy of mind, science and psychology, _The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Psychology _will also be of interest to anyone studying psychology and its related disciplines. (shrink)

In this paper I distinguish three kinds of kinds: traditional philosophical kinds such as truth, knowledge, and causation; natural science kinds such as spin, charge and mass; and social kinds such as class, poverty, and marriage. The three-fold taxonomy I work with represents an idealised abstraction from the wide variety of kinds that there are and the messy phenomena that underlie them. However, the kinds I identify are discrete, and the three-fold taxonomy is useful when it comes to understanding claims (...) about the normativity, scope, and implementation of conceptual engineering. In particular it reveals: first, that conceptual engineering in a broad sense is not distinctively normative; but second, that there is a distinctive normativity present in conceptual engineering in the narrow sense of amelioration; third, that conceptual engineering in the narrow sense of amelioration is only possible for terms that refer to kinds whose grounds we can change; and fourth, that the amelioration of such kind terms can be brought about as a result of changing the grounds of those kinds. The overall aim is to draw attention to the differences between kinds of kinds to make sense of the diverse and often conflicting claims in the conceptual engineering literature, both from its proponents and from its detractors. The hope is that paying attention to the differences between kinds of kinds will provide a better understanding of the landscape. (shrink)